Your data: Always on, always secure with intelligent data infrastructure powered by ONTAP

We know that you're facing daunting challenges in managing your data, especially in this new era defined by the massive transformative potential of artificial intelligence. We understand that stewardship of your data can be a heavy burden, demanding significant time, energy, and resources to ensure efficient and secure transfer. In fact, according to McKinsey, 72% of chief data officers of leading organizations say that managing data is already one of the top challenges preventing them from scaling AI use cases.

Today, we're excited to share innovations to help you shoulder the data burden and turn it into a data opportunity. We’re announcing a more powerful and secure intelligent data infrastructure that’s fully loaded with NetApp ONTAP^® new capabilities in advanced data management and industry-leading ransomware protection. Let's dive right in. 

Mission-critical databases are the foundation of nearly every business, usually on virtualized infrastructure. The majority of this infrastructure runs on block-optimized storage, such as NetApp All SAN Array (ASA). With the new NetApp^® SnapMirror^® active sync capability (available at no additional cost for SAN workloads on NetApp AFF and NetApp ASA systems), businesses can achieve seamless data replication and uninterrupted access to their critical applications. This innovative solution synchronizes data across two remote sites for real-time accessibility and synchronization over distance. In the event of a failure, applications seamlessly redirect to the active site, maintaining data integrity and uninterrupted access automatically and instantly. When the downed site is restored, data replication resumes, enabling instant operations across both sites. With SnapMirror active sync, organizations can rely on a robust, multilayered data protection strategy that safeguards against various types of data loss. 

With a high-availability configuration, neither site is dormant, so that you can take full advantage of your investment while providing lossless application resilience. Better business continuity, better utilization, and minimal administrative overhead make SnapMirror active sync a winning combination for SAN workloads. Learn more about SnapMirror active sync in the launch blog.

In today's digital landscape, we find ourselves operating in a global environment, with teams spread across various locations around the globe. The scale of collaboration has grown exponentially, with teams working on vast volumes of data. For example, in the media and entertainment industry, a creative team in Los Angeles might create an animation sequence, and a few hours later a second team in Seoul might add visual effects using the same collection of files. Other industries such as software development, engineering, and electronics design teams have similar access requirements, with large groups of files being accessed for read and write by distributed teams. If all of these activities were performed on a central data repository, it would result in data transfers across the wide area network (WAN), leading to latency issues and subpar application performance. 

NetApp ONTAP FlexCache^® solves this problem for read-intensive operations by creating a copy of data near where the work is being done. Local teams can use this “data cache” for read purposes, enabling fast response times and greatly reducing WAN latency for read activity. Although this procedure greatly improves read latency, write latency could still be an issue, because write and acknowledgment were sent across the WAN to the origin before being committed.

Now, the new FlexCache write-back allows the local cache to accelerate writes as well as reads for a complete I/O turbo boost. With FlexCache write-back, the caching storage system commits the write locally and then informs the origin of the change out of band. The writes are happening at LAN speed and the WAN latency is eliminated from the application workflow. Application performance for local teams is greatly improved by the elimination of this WAN latency, providing better quality of service for distributed teams. And because cache invalidation and lock management happen automatically, administrators aren’t burdened with the arduous task of synchronizing data between distributed sites. 

For distributed teams working on large sets of data, FlexCache with write-back offers the speed of a local data repository even when operations are global. Learn more about FlexCache write-back in the blog.

NetApp ONTAP is the operating system that unifies your infrastructure and powers the data that’s stored on it. This latest release includes critical capabilities that improve performance, increase availability, and enhance security. And because it’s delivered in the form of a unified storage operating system, all NetApp AFF, FAS, and ASA systems immediately benefit from the new capabilities without replacing hardware or adding new systems.

We continue to leverage ONTAP to deliver enhanced security by using the powerful ONTAP SnapLock^® and Snapshot^™ features to create a recipe for logical air gap success with a cyber vault reference architecture. This cyber vault solution creates logical air gaps for your data to protect it from cyber threats and ransomware while meeting regulatory compliance requirements. Learn more about this cyber vault solution in the blog.

For more than 30 years, NetApp has prioritized solving customers’ greatest data needs to help them realize the value of their most valuable asset. That's why we’re constantly offering the best in unified data storage, secured, accelerated, and future-proofed for tomorrow.

Find out more about how ONTAP can unify your data infrastructure.